"Yes, I have remarked that I don't generally see them when the coffee comes; but it is only for about a quarter of an hour," answered the magistrate, as he brushed some cigar-ash off his coat, just where his new North Star Order hung.
"They are not treating you properly," continued Aalbom; "especially when Richard calls himself an attaché, and has some pretensions to good manners."
"Oh! well, as far as he is concerned," answered the other, "he means to show his contempt for people in office. Richard Garman, like all people who have led shady lives, is an ultra-Radical."
"No doubt, sir. And I am not very certain about the Consul either; he has no respect for a cultivated intellect."
"But can you expect anything better from a man in trade?"
"A shopkeeper, you might say," whispered Aalbom, looking cautiously around. "There, now," he added, "I declare if it is not raining! Just what one might have expected. We had a little sunshine in the morning, and so of course it must rain in the afternoon. What a climate! what a country!" and, amid a torrent of ejaculations and anathemas, they both went hurriedly round the pond, and reached the house just as the rain began to fall in earnest.
The company generally sat downstairs when the weather was fine, in the room with the French windows opening into the garden; but now, as it had begun to rain, and the wind began to rustle through the flowers and the Virginian creeper on the railings, they went upstairs.
Whether it was that the two Garmans had really wished to show their contempt for people in office by taking a nap, or whether their absence had been accidental, they had both returned to the company, and Richard was standing with his back to the fireplace, and the Consul was under the old clock, in conversation with Jacob Worse.
It was generally supposed that it was to these Sunday afternoon conversations with Worse that the Consul owed his perfect knowledge of every event that took place in the town.
Madeleine was sitting by the window, looking out at the rain. She was quite astonished to find how agreeable Pastor Martens could be. Her knowledge of clergymen had hitherto been confined to her father's descriptions of them, which were amusing enough, but far from flattering.